Autumn: Disintegration (28 page)

He was getting off the bus for the seventh time when he got caught.

“What the hell are you doing?” Webb asked, stepping out from around a corner, early morning cigarette and beer in hand. Jas jumped back with surprise. The panic on his face was clear and Webb chuckled as he swigged from his can of lager.

“Nothing,” Jas answered quickly.

“Like hell. Doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Just piss off, Webb,” he said. “It’s none of your business.”

“Yes, it is. That’s my stuff you’re taking.”

“It’s
our
stuff,” he corrected him.

“Whatever. Point is, it’s not
your
stuff, you thieving bastard. I’ve been watching you for the last half hour. I know where you’re stashing it.”

Jas sighed dejectedly. How could he explain to this stupid little shit what he was doing without him thinking he was simply creaming off the best of their supplies for himself—which, if Jas was completely honest with himself, he was. Did he need to explain himself at all?

“Look,” he began, deciding he should give it a shot and see how Webb reacted, “at the moment everything we’ve got is scattered around this place. Most of it’s up by the restaurant and the conference room, lots more still out in the bus.”

“So you thought you’d help yourself?”

“All I’m doing,” he replied, determined not to give Webb opportunity to argue, “is putting some of it somewhere else. What if there’s a fire and half the building goes up in smoke? What if someone gets sick like Anita and Ellie and we have to shut ourselves away from them? What if the bodies get in here?”

“Bullshit,” Webb spat, full of animosity. “You’re a liar. You’re not going to tell anyone else where you’re putting this stuff. You’re taking it for yourself, you fucker.”

“Shut up,” Jas said, struggling to remain calm and not overreact.
He’s not worth it,
he silently told himself. Unable to suppress his anger, he dropped the box he’d been carrying and moved threateningly toward Webb.

“You’re a fucking thieving bastard,” Webb continued, his anger unabated and his confidence buoyed by booze. “Wait till I tell the others what you’re up to.”

Jas lunged for Webb and grabbed him by the neck. After checking that no one else was around he pushed him up against the nearest wall, knocking his head back with a satisfying thump.

“Do yourself a favor and shut up,” he said, his voice disarmingly calm. “You’re not going to tell anyone anything.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because if you do,” he whispered, moving even closer so that his face was now just millimeters from Webb’s, “I’ll tell them what you did to Stokes.”

Webb immediately stopped struggling. He mouthed a few silent words but, for a second, he was unable to respond.

“Didn’t do anything,” he eventually mumbled. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did,” Jas said ominously. “I saw you.”

Not waiting for a response, he picked up his box and disappeared back into the building, leaving Webb standing useless and alone outside.

41

“If there’s one thing we’ve got plenty of here,” Ginnie said, her arms fully loaded, “it’s white sheets.”

Hollis moved to let her through and watched as she disappeared outside to find Martin and Caron. Gordon followed close behind. Those two seemed to be attached at the hip, he thought as he pushed past him, desperate to catch up. Finally Lorna came through, her hair tied up in a long ponytail, struggling with yet more linen.

“Here, let me,” he said, holding the door open. She smiled briefly, but didn’t say anything. Hollis ducked into the kitchen to pick up another pile of sheets, then followed the rest of them out.

The early morning cloud had remained but had steadily lightened from dark gray to a brighter white as the sun tried to break through. It wasn’t much after eight but it felt much, much later.
Funny how our body clocks seem to have synchronized themselves with the sun and the moon,
he thought as he walked across the lawn toward the others. Previously he’d have got up when it was time to go to work and gone to bed when he’d finished watching TV or come in from the pub. Now the only thing which happened with any regularity was the steady progress of the sun across the sky, and they’d all matched their daily routines to the light. Up at dawn, ready to sleep by dusk.

Martin was flapping like an overprotective mother hen. Caron seemed to have a better grasp of the task at hand.

“No, Martin,” she protested, “we need to start over here and put the letters the other way up to how you’re suggesting. Down the lawn, not across it, see? H … E … L … P…”

As she spoke she pointed to where she thought each letter should go.

“She’s right,” Gordon agreed. “We can make the letters bigger if we do it that way.”

“Doesn’t really matter which way up they go, does it?” added Ginnie enthusiastically, pleased to have finally found something to occupy her time.

“Keep your voices down,” Hollis nervously warned. They were almost at the boundary fence, near to the gap he’d gone through with Martin earlier. They could hear snatches of music in the distance and he felt uncomfortably close to the dead. If only they knew just how many bodies he’d seen gathered on the golf course.

Lorna didn’t speak. Ignoring the others as they fussed and argued, she began laying down the first sheet and opening it out. Using sand, soil, stones, and whatever else he could find, Hollis followed her around and weighed down the edges of the material.

“Think this is going to do it?” he asked as she unfolded the second sheet.

“We’ve got nothing to lose by trying, have we?”

Following her lead, Gordon and Ginnie also started to work. Ginnie lay two sheets down to form the cross of the H, Gordon secured them. Hollis was fetching more linen when a football bounced up off the grass and hit him in the face, knocking him back. Sudden, searing pain coursed through his injured ear. He looked up angrily to see Sean approaching. Webb wasn’t far behind.

“Sorry,” Sean began, jogging toward him. Hollis barged past.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yelled at Webb, the blinding pain and anger making him temporarily forget the volume of his voice. “Are you fucking stupid?”

“No, are you?” Webb goaded. Hollis ran at him but the younger man was too fast and sidestepped his clumsy attack.

“Come here, you little bastard,” he seethed. “I’m gonna kill you.”

“No, you’re not. You can’t even catch me!”

“Leave it out,” Lorna pleaded, running after them both. “Come on, Hollis, this is pointless. He’s just a little idiot. Not worth wasting your time on.”

“You can fuck off too,” Webb spat.

Hollis sprinted forward again and slid in the dew-soaked grass, much to Webb’s amusement. He picked himself up and glared at him, breathing hard. Lorna held him back.

“Please,” she said, “just ignore him. He’s only doing it to wind you up. Come back and help us get this finished.”

“Fucking idiot,” Hollis shouted, forgetting himself again. “Why can’t you do something useful instead of screwing around all the time?”

“You call that useful?” Webb shouted back, pointing at the sheets on the grass. “How is that useful? How’s that going to help? Who’s gonna see it?”

“What’s going on?” Jas asked. He’d emerged from the hotel when he’d first heard the raised voices. “You lot got any idea how much noise you’re making?”

“It’s okay, Jas,” Lorna told him as she tried again to pull Hollis away. “There’s no problem. It’s nothing.”

“Come on, mate,” Sean said to Webb, passing the football to him. “Let’s go. No point standing here arguing about—”

He looked up at the sky. The others immediately did the same. One by one they heard the helicopter engine approaching. Webb was the first to spot it—a small, black, spidery silhouette crawling across the off-white sky several miles north of where they were standing.

“There it is,” he said, pointing up at the aircraft, “and that’s why what you’re doing is stupid. How are they supposed to see your letters on the ground when they’re not even flying overhead? They’re fucking miles away. They’ll never see it.”

He was right and Hollis knew it.

“So what do you suggest?” he asked, sounding uncharacteristically desperate. “What else are we supposed to do? What we’re doing is better than doing nothing at all.”

“You need a fucking fire or something,” Webb answered. “A great big fucking fire in the middle of nowhere. At least then they’ll—”

“Shut up!” Jas interrupted. “Listen!”

Another engine, loud enough for them all to hear.

“There!” Lorna said excitedly. “Look at that! It’s a bloody plane.”

“Christ,” Sean said under his breath as they stood and stared at the second, much larger aircraft. “There must be loads of them. It’s a bloody mass evacuation.”

“That’s not good,” Jas warned.

“Not good?” he protested. “How can it not be good?”

“Because you might be right—and if you are, then they’re probably clearing out, aren’t they? And if they’re doing that, then they ain’t going to be flying over here many more times.”

42

“They’re a bunch of fucking wasters,” Webb cursed, finishing another can of beer—he’d lost count of how many he’d already had today—and throwing it onto the growing pile of empties in the corner of Sean’s room at the back of the hotel. “They’re going to sit in here and fucking rot, I tell you. Just fucking look at them.”

He held back a corner of the curtain, letting a little light into the otherwise dark room. They were all still out there, writing their pointless message on the grass with dirty bedsheets.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Sean said. “You just have to ignore them. I’ve had weeks of that kind of bullshit since I’ve been here. They’re always telling me you can’t do this and you can’t do that. Honestly, mate, it’s been worse than living with your bloody parents!”

“What happens if that helicopter does see us and lands? Where are we going to end up? We’ll still have them with us. Same shit, different place. Don’t know how you’ve put up with it for as long as you have, mate.”

“What else could I do?”

“You could have stood up for yourself. Could have told them how pissed off you were.”

“And what good would that have done?”

“You could have left them. I would have if I was stuck here. At least back at the flats I could get out when I wanted to.”

“But I didn’t want to go out. They told me how bad it was and how we had to keep our heads down and I believed them.”

“That was all bullshit! You saw it for yourself yesterday. It’s no fucking walk in the park out there, but we did okay, didn’t we?”

“I was scared because
they
were scared, I can see it now. Until yesterday I was fucking terrified of going outside, but you were right, it was an absolute fucking breeze.”

“Thing is,” Webb continued, the alcohol increasing his ire, “they don’t actually want us here. We’re just a pain in the backside to them. They wouldn’t miss us if we went.”

“So let’s go, then.”

“How?”

Sean opened the curtain fully. “See the road between here and the golf course?”

Webb nodded. “What about it?”

“Follow it back towards the front of the hotel.”

Webb did as he was instructed. He followed the curve of the road right around the outer edge of the hotel grounds. All he could see was a field on the other side of the road, empty save for a few hundred bodies staggering around aimlessly. A ragged group of them—he couldn’t see how many—appeared to be hanging around close to the hedge in an unruly mob.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“See there?” Sean said, pointing down toward the front of the hotel complex. “There’s a car parked in the road.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Martin and Howard put that car there to block a gate.”

“Into that field? So what? You thinking of going for a bloody picnic?”

Sean shook his head.

“Point is there’s another gate on the opposite side of the field. We can get out that way without moving any of their bloody trucks and buses. Go the other way at the fork in the road, take the brakes off and shift that car, and we’re out.”

“But what about the bodies? I can see plenty, but aren’t there supposed to be thousands of them ’round here?”

“Didn’t think that bothered you.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Webb replied arrogantly, “but I’m not about to stick my bare arse out in the middle of a massive crowd of corpses unless I’ve got no choice.”

“They’re all on the golf course up there, well out of the way. Those are just the stragglers. Come on, you’ve told me you’ve dealt with bigger crowds than that before.”

Webb didn’t answer at first. He continued to stare out the window into the field that Sean had showed him. There weren’t that many bodies; even the unexplained mass clumped around the hedge wasn’t huge. Could they try running for it? Maybe that was too risky. There had to be another way of getting out.

“How did you say you got here?” he asked, a plan forming.

“Scooter,” Sean replied, “but it’s fucked. I’ve got a flat tire and hardly any fuel.”

“Can you ride a bike?”

43

Almost eleven o’clock. Gordon, Ginnie, Lorna, and Caron were still unloading and sorting supplies from the bus. They were working deliberately slow, dragging out the job to keep themselves occupied and fill their empty day.

“Was there really any point in bringing back this much pickle?” Ginnie asked, looking down her nose through half-moon glasses at the three trays of sandwich pickle Lorna had just carried inside. “Horrible stuff.”

“One day,” Lorna replied, sweating and breathless with effort, “you might be grateful for that. And like I keeping saying, love, if there was something special you wanted bringing back, you should have got off your backside and gone out there with us, shouldn’t you?”

“I’ll eat it,” Gordon said unhelpfully, ripping open the packaging, picking up a jar and studying the label. “I love this stuff. I could live on it.”